can we get caught

[daithi]

ok ya here every once in a while so and so has been caught downloading a cd or dvd and is brought to court

one incident recently, a woman was brought to court and fined millions for downloading a few songs, dont no how she faired out since with an appeal and stuff

so im just wondering, whats the chances of anyone on this site or any site getting caught doing something similar

and is there a way of trying to protect yourself
because from what i can see one year ago turning on my computer and going onto bebo was all i did

what got me going was a dreambox 500c and ive just gone from here to here downloading the odd thing since

so what im getting at is, can me and other users protect ourselves a bit better

[Swiftie]

To be fair, withour your ISP's cooperation, then it wouldn't be easy to be caught doing something that you shouldn't be doing.

[ruudvandan]

yeah, and I don't see ISPs volunteering all of their customers' details over because as soon as the news breaks, people will unsubscribe in their droves. It's in the ISPs' commercial interests to keep their customers happy

[chroma]

How the process works.

You download something illegal from a peer to peer network and you connect to several people.
Ocasionaly some of these people arent really people but bots owned by media companies which log your ip address and CLIENT ID.

Of course the chances of a suit going through for someone downloading a single file is slim to nill, so they keep monitoring. This is when your ISP gets informed of your actions and depending on ISP's will forward mail saying "stop downloading you fool, theyre on to you!"

You download another file and you may wind up connected to the same company who checks yo against their list and begins building a profile.

Once you reach a certain threshold your classified as a proflific infringer and the company then starts proceedings.
The company presents the profile to the court and requests a warrant to be served on your ISP to sustain your personal information or in certain instances cooperation in monitoring you (this is where the client id is important, IP's are usualy dynamicaly assigned so they will change over time, the client id will not so they can compile a list of times and dates with corresponding IP's and this will be on record at the isp as your lease)

They then submit a court order to your residence and begin civil proceedings (if they can prove youve done so for a profit, like selling stuff then they can go after a criminal suit)

The Jammie Tomas-Rasset case finished up currently at $1.92million although she was proven to have lied in court during the case and has filed for an appeal.
80k per song, her last case was 10k per song which she successfully appealed (winding up with the 80k judgement)

Joel Tenembaum is fairing equaly as bad. although this is mostly a circuis case (his legal team is just as insane as he is)
Neither case will end well, there are too many lies surrounding each to be viewed favourably in a court or to be looked on with much in the way of public sympathy... which is pretty much why the RIAA targeted both to begin with.

As for protection, there really isnt any.
Encryption stops people telling what your downloading by looking at your traffic data, it doesnt prevent either end from seeing whats going on before things become encrypted.
Filesharing sites lie rapidshare, megaupload etc all log transfers so theyre a bust
Torrents are monitored by mediafarms as are the majority of peer to peer networks.

The only way to be completely safe is by taking it offline, i swap files nowadays via bluetooth and a big memory card on my phone. so i know the people im swapping with and know everyone involved.

[maxi1968]

greed its all greed

[daithi]

sure is maxi1968 sure is

[wod1]

you'll only get done if your a big downloader and one that openly shares files with anyone.

if they suspect you, i was told they have to get a warrant from the courts to get your isp to disclose your internet activity

[Evastar]

What about running peer guardian, does that not help?

[chroma]

peerguardian is full of fail.

It only blocks a known list of ip's, most of which are no longer any threat.
Its the unknowns you need to worry about which peerguardian doesnt cover.

[karim5492]

peerguardian

can any one help i have peerguardian and it will not allow me to load on what can i check new to software willing to learn

[thered]

torrent site btjunkie runs a system that encrypts torrents even from your own ISP and runs them through canada apparantly


they charge around ?4.50 per month for the service but if you d/load a lot like me i think its worth it if you have had a few warnings from your ISP, thats assuming it works of course

[chroma]

Even encryption services dont really work

They prevent your ISP seeing whats in the packets going through their network but dont deall with the point to point problem, if i watch a tracker i can see exactly whos downloading what regardless of what encryption theyre running or where its being tunneled through.

This is what big media does, log on to a tracker to share themselves and gather a list of users.

The problem is proving its the person on the other end tied to the IP address thats downloading the file.

If it gets to court then the burden of proof lies with them, so long as you keep quiet, deny everything and act like a clueless user you should be fine.

The average user doesnt have the first idea about securing a wifi connection so in theory anyone within a few miles could be downloading the file
Sharing files is ILLEGAL but sharing a connection... thats a far greyer issue.
"Its not my fault your honour, i have a device that wouldnt work, the internets told me to go into my router thingie and disable security, now my device works." should get you out of trouble in most cases, so long as youve deleted all traces of file sharing programs from your network. That way they cant pair the client id with the IP and your a free man!

[dctyper]

can any one help i have peerguardian and it will not allow me to load on what can i check new to software willing to learn

are you using win7?

use peerblock

dc

[dik]

Download from news groups, then you are not sharing anything, it's the people who upload lots of files that they are targeting

[Chimaera]

Of course there are ways to mask who you are but anonimity has a price, usualy a 10mb max download speed at the extreme end

Peerguardian and Peerblock can be helpfull but are dependant upon using the right list of ip's to block and if you use all the available lists your speeds drop of like a fart..

But and there is always a but..
Even if you encrypted, and using proxy and tunneling and programs to mask ip etc etc there will always be a bump in the monitor at your ISP
Think of it like one of those heart rate monitors in a hospital, everytime you take something there will be a bump in the line where and when you took it.
Now if your carefull the isp may not be able to tell what it was because of encryption masking etc but they know if you have half an hour bump at max connection it will more than likely be a movie.

So unless you run you own ISP thats about the only way to get round it,at the end of the day if any ISP is dragged into court over one user downloading a lot of stuff they will hand your records over like a flash to protect the rest of their business intrests.

Plus if your suspected of doing soming thing illegal they will want to be seen publicly as being helpfull to law enfocement so it keeps the heat of them hiding all the other downloaders.

To get caught you have to be seriously taking the mick with the downloading, and if your sucking up the bandwidth all the time its no big loss to lose you as it helps their network latency.

Do's
Use private sites where possible
Use different types of downloading (torrents / Nzb / rapid etc)
Do a bit then leave it alone for a few days
Use protection where available or possible (Peerguardian etc)
Create share groups with other software amongst small groups that you know
Pass dvd's between friends then the downloading is shared amonst several Ips

Dont's
Dont max your connection night and day
Dont use public trackers unless absoltlutly necessary
Dont brag about how much stuff u have (they are on forums as well)
Dont seed for days on public trackers this is what they watch for

Just a few thoughts